Halevy, Nir, Eileen Chou, Taya Cohen and Gary Bornstein. Forthcoming. Relative deprivation and intergroup competition.
Group Processes and Intergroup Relations.
Two experiments utilized a new experimental paradigm – the IPD-MD game – to study how relative deprivation at the group level affects intergroup competition. The IPD-MD game enables group members to make a costly contribution to either a within-group pool that benefits fellow in-group members, or a between-group pool, which, in addition harms out-group members. We found that when group members were put in a disadvantaged position, either by previous actions of the out-group (Experiment 1) or by random misfortune (Experiment 2), they contributed substantially more to the competitive between-group pool. This destructive behavior both minimized inequality between the groups and reduced collective efficiency. Our results underscore the conditions that lead group members to care about relative (rather than absolute) group outcomes and highlight the need to differentiate between the motivation to get ahead and the motivation not to fall behind: the latter, it appears, is what motivates individual participation in destructive intergroup competition.

Halevy, Nir. 2008. Team negotiation: Social, epistemic, economic and psychological consequence of sub-group conflict.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 34: 1687-1702.
Halevy, Nir, Gary Bornstein and Lilach Sagiv. 2008. "In-group love" and "out-group hate" as motives for individual participation in intergroup conflict: A new game paradigm.
Psychological Science. 19: 405-411.
Roccas, Sonia, Lilach Sagiv, Shalom H. Schwartz,
Nir Halevy and Roy Eidelson. 2008. Toward a unifying model of identification with groups: Integrating theoretical perspectives.
Personality and Social Psychology Review. 12: 280-306.
Halevy, Nir, Lilach Sagiv, Sonia Roccas and Gary Bornstein. 2006. Perceiving intergroup conflict: From game models to mental templates.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 32: 1674-1689.